My thoughts, and opinions on many subjects. But it's always a mad world.

Updating Tuesdays, and Saturdays, with a video blog the last Thursday of each month (Most of the time anyway). On Sunday I roll over, and go back to sleep.

So Who is Amanda Harper?

Well to start with I'm obviously a writer, though of everything from very alternative romances to crime dramas.

I'm a lesbian, trans-woman in her 30's, who is very much into her royal blue hair (now purple), velvet and leather filled wardrobe and of course my oversized shit kicking goth boots. Oh, and I'm a hardcore PC, and tabletop gamer.

In this blog I want to hit on subjects that I don't have another medium for. Expect reviews of games old and new, though mostly old. Expect rants about the world in general. Expect the occasional lapse into convoluted personal philosophy. Oh and definitely expect some stuff on BDSM, after all I was a professional dominatrix for a few years and enjoy the BDSM lifestyle in my private life now.

So I hope you enjoy the randomness of my ruminations, and let the madness commence.

(Please feel absolutely welcome to comment on any and all of my posts. I have only three rules...
1: avoid Godwins rule.
2: avoid bad language.
3: I'm not here to provide free advertising to commercial websites, comment if you wish but I will edit out links post to such sites.
Other than that enjoy yourself, and please feel free to have a pretty signature.)

A students guide to cooking – Detonated Potato.

With so many newly minted 3rd Level students having just evolved, from semi-literate 2nd Level students, it seemed timely to write a very basic guide to cooking for ones self. So here is a step by step guide to making “Amanda Harpers not in anyway famous Detonated Potatoes”.

1: Preheat an oven to ridiculous degrees centigrade, or Gas Mark Holy Fuck! Having first emptied it of all those sticky, greasy trays that usually call it home. Having to fight your way through a room filled with eye-burning black smoke only makes everything else more difficult.

2: Pick out as large a potato as you can find. This is important, you’ll see why later.

3: Wash said potato. DO NOT PEEL IT!

4: Also wash the inside of the microwave.

5: Also wash the fork.

6: Also wash the plate.

7: Also while you’re at it wash your damn kitchen, honestly your mother would be ashamed of you living in filth like that!

8: Prick the potato with a fork only barely enough times that it doesn’t explode in the oven. Once or twice very shallowly should do.

9: Once the oven has achieved the necessary temperature, place your prepared potato on the top shelf. Try to remember that everything inside the oven is now liable to strip your flesh off, so don’t touch any of it.

10: While you wait watch an episode of Scrubs, or Two and a Half Men. They both last approximately 30 minutes which is important. Or you could do some studying…nah!

11: Once J.D. has given his generic closing monologue, or Charlie has smugly wandered up those stairs with yet another hot woman, it’s time to return to the kitchen. The kitchen is the room with the cooker, fridge, and possibly rats, depending on the quality of your housing/cleaning. You may recognise it as the room where your mother cooked most of your meals growing up, and you grudgingly did the washing up after dinner…once or twice.

12: Wrap your hand in something non-conductive. That means a dry towel, an oven glove, a newspaper. It does not include tin foil, or for sanitation reasons a pair of dead rats.

13: Carefully remove the potato from the oven, taking care not to balance yourself by grabbing the shiny metal inside.

14: Place the potato in the centre of the microwave. Set the microwave to its highest setting, start it, and stand back. Don’t go anywhere you’re going to want to watch this.

15: After between 30 seconds and 2-3 minutes (this isn’t an exact science and a lot depends on how many holes you previously poked with that fork) you will hear a loud “Booooffff!” possibly accompanied by the microwave jumping slightly, depending on the size of the potato. If the light still works in the microwave, and you’re the sort to stand with your face pressed against the glass, mesmerized by the food spinning inside, you will have seen your potato detonate.

16: Open the microwave, and scoop out the fluffy white stuff that exploded out of the potato, and encased the entire inside of your microwave with itself, on to your plate. Simply throw away the probably empty potato skin. The size of the potato will decide how much of the fluffy white stuff you actually get to eat, I told you the size was important.

17: Eat the fluffy white stuff with a knob of butter, and the fork you used earlier to prick it. If you’re male and possibly a rugby player, please don’t use knob-butter and then give the resulting unholy concoction to your housemate. It’s not funny, it’s not clever, and when he finds out he’ll probably slit your throat while you sleep, with a dull, rusty bread knife.

18: Laugh at all the dick jokes I made in the last two steps.

19: Laugh because I wrote the word “dick” in the last step.

20: Clean the microwave and kitchen again after cooking. Don’t look at me that way, living in filth is the reason why your cereal has that extra crunch that only cockroaches add to a health breakfast.

21: If you didn’t clean the fork, and microwave, or if you did in fact pick up your potato with those two dead rats, enjoy your night of sitting on the toilet.

There you are the recipe for detonated potato. Next time, a step by step guide to preparing non-crunchy porridge. It’s trickier than you might think.